The Feustmann Cottage Reception Hospital, 2009

Born: 1870

Died: 1943

Married: Grace Brickner

Children:

Maurice Mayer Feustmann graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and completed his architectural studies in Munich, Germany and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In the early 1890s, he returned to Philadelphia where he worked for several architects, including Cope and Stewardson, who were known for Collegiate Gothic buildings and campuses. He came to Saranac Lake in the late 1890s seeking a cure for tuberculosis. He stayed for two years, and then the continued his cure in southwest.

In 1903 William Henry Scopes invited Feustmann to return to Saranac Lake to become his partner. The new firm of Scopes and Feustmann entered and won a competition to design a Reception Hospital for Mary Prescott. The Colonial Revival-style Reception Hospital, off of Franklin Avenue, began what would become a specialization in the design of sanatoria, including the Mary Lewis Reception Hospital in Loomis, New York; the Vermont State Sanatorium; the Laurentian Sanatorium at St. Agathe, Quebec; the William Wirt Winchester Memorial Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut; the Lake Edward Sanatorium; and the County of St. Louis Sanatorium at Duluth, Minnesota. Scopes had already been working in the Colonial Revival style when Feustmann joined him, and Maurice Feustmann may have introduced Italian Renaissance and Beaux-Arts influences from his European education.

By 1910, the firm was also speculating in local real estate, building houses incorporating curing features at 84, 86, 90 and 96 Park Avenue (now 169, 177, and 185 Park, and 75 Catherine). Feustmann held 90 Park Avenue as a rental property until at least 1916. In 1922, Maurice Feustmann married Grace Brickner of New York City, and in 1923 built their home at 28 (now 83) Catherine Street. The firm also produced designs for several camps, notably the Kildare Club, a private family completed in 1906, and the 1907 Haase Block at 60 Main Street (site of the present Adirondack Bank), an Italian Renaissance Revival commercial building, that includes apartments on the second and third floors with open-air balconies.

The names "Scopes and Feustmann" became inseparable, and it is difficult to distinguish their contributions. Together, they are responsible for a substantial portion of the built environment of Saranac Lake, including the Harrietstown Town Hall, the Hotel Saranac, the Santanoni Apartments, and the Will Rogers Hospital.

Feustmann was linked by a sister's marriage to the Gimbel family who founded Knollwood Club on Lower Saranac Lake.

Maurice Feustmann died of heart disease in 1943, age 70.

Will Rogers Memorial Hospital

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